No Special School Bus Detour

Our Towns: Harwinton

September 14, 1995

Board of Education members in Region 10, which covers Harwinton and Burlington, should decline, reluctantly, to give one family special transportation for its students. Although the boys have to walk farther than some others, it is not inordinately far. The parents should have known the road would be a problem for school buses when they moved into their neighborhood.

Blueberry Hill in Harwinton is home to the Nadeau family, whose three sons are in second, fifth and seventh grades. It is no thrill to drive this hill. The dead-end road is unpaved, narrow and pitted and has no sidewalks, streetlights or drainage. A full-size school bus can't get up the road, so the boys must walk nine-tenths of a mile to the nearest blacktop.

The boys' parents say the walk is too far. Right now, the Nadeaus often drive them to and from the stop in their all-terrain vehicles. With both parents working, though, they say this schedule is hard to keep.

The Nadeaus say the school board should send a minivan to their home. The school board agrees the walk is long, but says sending any vehicle up Blueberry Hill would endanger the driver and the students. It will make a final decision Monday.

As taxpayers, the Nadeaus might seem to have a right to transportation for their children. But they have made it particularly difficult for the board, which also rightly does not want to jeopardize school employees or buses. The schools don't have sport-utility vehicles.

The parents built their home knowing the road wasn't going to be paved. They should have thought about the difficulty a school bus, or even emergency vehicles, would have navigating that road.